I’ve taken a bit of a beating over the last few days. Deserts are not to be taken lightly. Even (or maybe especially) when they’re cold and wet.

I’ve also made it to country number 20 on the round-the-world ride (Kazakhstan). But it hasn’t been easy. And it hasn’t all been on the bike.

It all began well enough. I picked up a decent tailwind on the way out of Nukus on Sunday. It was a bit chilly, but the sun was out. I was a happy boy, and fairly flew up the (generally) well-surfaced main drag towards my second stretch of Uzbek desert. I had three long days (each between 130 and 140 kms) to the end of Uzbekistan. If they were all like Sunday, it would have been a doddle.

It’s easy to spot where the Ustyurt Plateau begins (spellings, once again, differ). Not because, being a plateau, you have to climb a massive hill to get to it. You can see most of the hill above, and it’s really not very big.

But the ‘city’ on the skyline to the left of the picture is an unmistakeable marker. And it’s not a standard city. It’s a city of the dead. This is a local tradition, on both sides of the border; the dead are all put together, in tombs ranging from the basic (the ones that look like houses if you zoom in) to the flamboyant (the ones that look like mosques). It’s quite a spectacular sight, and with only about 30 km to go to my first stop in the desert, it made a nice end to a good day.

Day two couldn’t have been more different. I’d timed my exit from Nukus to coincide with what should have been two days of tailwinds. The weather had other ideas. A 30 mile-an-hour headwind greeted me as I turned north-west (the last turn for three days). Within an hour, it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to make the 130 kms that I had pencilled in for the day, to Jasliq.

It’s pretty demoralising to realise so early in a ride that you’re not going to make it. And riding solo in the desert, self preservation dictates that you need to be careful. I decided to give it another hour to see if thing got better. Meanwhile, I began deliberating whether to turn back, or to try to flag down a lift.

Things didn’t get better. After two hours on the road, I’d made 20 kms. And it had started to drizzle. As soon as I stopped, I could feel the wind-chill stealing my body heat. This wasn’t going to end well. I found some partial protection from the wind, and waited for a vehicle to come.

It took a while, but I was eventually picked up by a road-building crew. I’m not sure exactly what the process is for building roads over here, but there were fifteen of them in the truck. They dragged me and the bike on-board, with a warning that they were only going to their camp, another twenty kms on. But that there might be a bus later. They stopped twice on the way to the camp, once to hammer in a wonky fence-post, and once to pick up some wood. That appeared to be the team’s entire output for the morning.

In any case, they were all really nice, and forced me to thaw out next to the stove and drink tea while waiting for the (possibly mythical) bus to arrive. Eventually, four hours after they picked me up, a bus arrived. The bike was thrown unceremoniously into the back, on top of a couple of slightly (and understandably) irate pensioners, and I got to sit in the front and be lectured at by the driver as he flew along the road to Jasliq.

I felt a little bit defeated. But I also know that being wet and being thrashed by a cold wind (counting the wind-chill, the internet says it’s only the equivalent of 5C at the moment) is not a good mixture. The road-workers and the bus saved me from either retreating to the previous night’s accommodation or possible hypothermia. So I’m very grateful to them.

On arrival at the picturesque motel at Jasliq (the town also comprises a gas compression station – in the picture above – and a notorious prison. And nothing else.), I discovered another evil awaiting cyclists in this part of the world. The Ustyurt mud. You can see some in the picture. It’s like no other mud I’ve ever come across, and clogs bikes to a standstill within a couple of yards. More like wet concrete than traditional mud. It’s horrendous.

Thankfully, as Tuesday dawned, it was sunny again. The wind had shifted to a crosswind, which is not comfortable, but doesn’t slow you down too much. My composure and confidence returned, and I began making decent progress towards the tiny hamlet of Karakalpakiya. Look it up on a map.

The picture above could have been taken at pretty much any moment in the last 350 kms of Uzbekistan, which gives an idea of the sheer monotony of riding slowly through a completely unchanging landscape. Tuesday was only enlivened by an unexpected storm front moving through in the afternoon. This time, I was too far out from shelter, so I spent an exhausting (but at least vaguely interesting) couple of hours trying to out-run the incoming rain on an increasingly broken road.

I nearly made it, too, before being thoroughly soaked about 5 kms short of my destination. And that 5 kms was enough for me to be a shivering wreck by the time I finally collapsed into a basic, but super-heated tea-house for my last night in Uzbekistan.

At dawn yesterday (Wednesday), I had the most beautiful view in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the metropolis of Karakalpakiya:

I also had the headwind back. And the border to look forward to. And the infamous dirt road from the border to Beyneu in Kazakhstan. A dirt road which I knew would be at least partially clogged unrideable Ustyurt mud. Because it had rained some more in the night.

I got to the border at about eleven. I’d read a lot of mixed reviews; most cyclists seemed to agree that it took about two hours to get through, as bags were thoroughly searched, medications inspected, dollars counted and so on. It took me forty minutes in total. As a tourist, you get to jump the queues. And the customs on both sides decided that asking if I had anything illegal was enough. I’m now in the slightly odd situation of being in country number 20, and not having had a bag searched so far. The only land border that was easier was between Vietnam and Laos.

And so, I popped out of the Kazakh customs building, and into the dirt. It’s still far from clear to me why, when the Uzbeks have gone to all the effort of building a tarmac road (not a great one in places, admittedly) all the way to the border, the Kazakhs haven’t done anything at all for the first 60 kms on their side. It’s not even that there’s a poor gravel road. It’s that the only route is desert dirt, compacted by trucks.

When it’s dry-ish, it looks like this:

And yes, the eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that I was in a vehicle again. I already explained about the mud. I knew there would be some. And there was another line of showers incoming.

I talked to a man with a four-wheel-drive van at the border. A price was agreed. It was just as well.

Even with 4WD, it still took us over three hours to drive the 80-odd kms to Beyneu. This was mainly because, about half an hour from the border, the deluge began:

I counted at least ten articulated trucks stuck up to their axles in the mud within 20 kms. I can’t imagine what it would have been like trying to push the bike through. Or how the trucks will get out, come to that, once the concrete-mud sets. It may be cheating, but taking that van was definitely one of my better decisions.

And so to Beyneu. A small and not-especially attractive little town, although the fact that it has supermarkets, hotels and mobile phone shops is more than enough for me, after the barren wastes of the last few days.

I should be leaving tomorrow (Friday). Apparently, the once-notorious road from here to Aktau on the Caspian Sea is very nearly finished (locals say that there’s about 30 km of dirt in the middle, but the rest is all gold). And it’s not entirely impossible that the headwinds may ease enough to give me a decent chance of making the run.

It’s also not entirely impossible that I’ll have another day off, or that more cheating may be on the cards.

If I’ve learned anything from the last few days, it’s that the most sensible way across the deserts of the former Soviet Union is in one of these:

Oh… Spot the camel, by the way.

We’ll see how it goes. But I’m not sure that I’m mentally strong enough to fire into another 450 km of desert just yet. And yet that’s all there is in front of me. And behind me. Erk!

…

For Cycle Tourists:

April 2016 – The desert stretch from Nukus to the Kazakh border has not changed since previous (2012/13) write-ups. There are still only three water / food points once you’re into the desert from the south. They are still in the same places as identified in other posts. The southern truck stop (Bon Voyage, on Google Maps – 140km from Nukus) is now a big complex with restaurant and good hotel rooms ($40, but at official rate, so really $20). The Al’Yan at Jasliq – 130km from Bon Voyage – charges $10 (at official rate) for a bed, or $5 to sleep in the chaikhana itself. Both Bon Voyage and Al’Yan will do registration. The Karakalpakiya chaikhana (130km from Jasliq / 20km from border) is still free if you eat there.

I allowed the lady who ran the guest house to persuade me that I should stay one more day. She’d read the tea leaves, or something, and was convinced that if I left on Wednesday, I’d just get soaked again, and probably freeze to death. It would be much better to leave on Thursday.

Plus, she’d get an extra day’s money, of course…

I’d checked the more scientific weather forecast, and, while it didn’t suggest much rain at all, another day in Khiva felt like a good idea (I’m not sure I’d fully recovered from that marathon 200-plus kms a few days before).

So I stayed. I had another poke around the old town, sampled some more coffee and kebabs in various hostelries, and gave the bike a good clean, which it much appreciated.

Needless to say, it was sunny all day. And when I awoke to get moving northwards on Thursday, I was greeted with a heavy shower, black clouds, and gusty winds that would be at least half in my face all day.

Oh, good.

Still, if I’d stayed in Khiva any longer, I’d have started growing roots. So I resigned myself to a longish, slowish slog for a couple of days. I donned the cold weather gear and the rain jacket again, and set sail for the last chunk of Uzbekistan that stood between me and the border; Karakalpakstan.

Or ‘Karakalpakistan’, as people took to calling it the closer I’ve got to it. By the time I crossed the (frankly over-ornamented) border, above, the spelling had shifted all the way to ‘Qaraqalpogiston’. It’s no wonder that it’s a bit tricky to search for stuff on the internet over here; there are usually at least two possible spellings in Latin script, plus at least one Cyrillic version. It’s amazing you can ever find anything…

My target was Nukus (or ‘Nokis’, etc, etc), which is the capital of Karakalpakstan / Qaraqalpogiston. It was only about 180 km up the road from Khiva / Xiva, but it felt like an awful lot further.

Thursday was essentially spent trying to outrun showers, while dodging potholes. And averaging a colossal 15 kph into the teeth of the wind. Urgh! Progress was not really helped by the awareness that, after Khiva, I was out of charming Silk Road cities to explore. And that all I was really doing was positioning myself for hundreds of kilometres of desert.

Given the lack of ancient historical sights, I thought I’d better concentrate on the more prosaic and everyday aspects of life in a post-Soviet republic.

Thankfully, Karakalpakstan is just the place to do this. Which made the second day to Nukus (Friday) much more bearable. I crossed a fantastically flimsy, improvised pontoon bridge, made it back to the main road, and took a left towards Kazakhstan.

The beautiful new road has not made it this far north yet, and you can see the consequences below; the old road (quite chewed up), the shoulder (dirt, but smoother than the road), and the unfinished new road (behind the camel).

Oh yeah, the camel.

This was something new. Although I’ve had my path obstructed by a number of beasts in the past, this was my first wild camel. But they’re apparently quite common further up the road. I’ll try to get a closer picture next time; this guy actually strolled right up to me, but I’d put the phone away by then, in case I needed to make a run for it.

Turned out he was much more interested in the bins at the nearby petrol station than in me, so I’ll try to be a little braver next time.

The camel is a fairly normal sight over here, but not something I’d usually expect to see. Nukus, on the other hand, is a straight copy from the template of small, ex-Soviet cities. It’s pretty easy to find Nukus clone-towns from the Sea of Japan to the Polish border.

Naturally, I’m once again staying in the most Soviet place I could find:

And this hotel may actually not have changed at all in the last 25 years. Certainly, the plumbing and electrics (as well as the carpet) are of that sort of vintage.

The town itself is a mixture of grandiose public buildings, large concrete blocks of flats, and dirt streets lined with small shops. All carefully planned, and sensibly placed. After all the beautiful mosques and minarets of the Silk Road cities, it’s a little bit of a come-down.

On the other hand, it’s the last city I’ll see for quite a few days (if all goes according to plan), so it’s nice to be able to stock up at the supermarket, get a decent cuppa, and wander the broad, carefully-swept boulevards.

Soviet-style or not, I have a feeling I’m going to miss the benefits of civilisation as I head back into the desert again…